The oath would be an OK condition of entry. On the other hand I do not think that we should discourage students, or other deist types, from engaging in discourse here. We have an obligation to plant the seeds of doubt. How can we do so unless we get them reeled in? It is abundently clear that xtians are ill equipped to debate here. There are too many of you that know their bible and their dogma better than they do. Yes, you can plant those seeds in jesus people except for the most seriously f**ked up ones.

So rather than barring them entry if they are here by order of their school/whatever, why not just have them swear to declare the fact when they join? That way they will still get to join, but we won't be mislead. Unless they lie, of course, but that's a problem under any system discussed so far.

I really don't care why someone joins the board. School project, fun, curiosity, anger, whatever ... its a free internet. As long as they don't misrepresent themselves, why do we care? If I were studying christianity I might join a christian board to study up on the species.

I guess I don't understand the problem. People come and go here all the time. Why treat students with a homework assignment any differently?

Logged

If we ever travel thousands of light years to a planet inhabited by intelligent life, let's just make patterns in their crops and leave.

Thinking about it again, I wouldn't mind if a theology student came here and was upfront about making 25 posts as part of their course requirement - they could request a debate with one or two people on a single subject, and that might be a worthwhile exercise for all concerned.

What was pissing me off two years ago (!) was people joining in a few discussions, stimulating debate and then suddenly disappearing when they'd fulfilled their quota.

Not that I knew for sure that these were theological students. I may simply have been paranoid (I used to be paranoid, but the alien doctors cured me during my latest abduction. I'm fine now).